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Academic Word List Exercises

The Academic Word List and IELTS writing

These words are exactly the sort of words you need to be able to use in your writing. They are all common words and you do need to learn to use them. This means learning:

their grammar

collocations/word combinations

different word forms

Their meaning is not normally a problem.

What is the Academic Word List?

My daily word exercises are based on the Academic Word List (AWL). The AWL is a list of the words most used in academic writing across all specialties (science, law, medicine,economics etc).

The AWL contains 570 word families subdivided in 10 lists with list 1 containing the most frequently used words and list 10 the least. The idea is that list 1 contains the most common words and list 10 the least common.

Learning how to use the Academic Word List

The Academic Word List is a great tool but you need to know how to use it. Here are some quick tips.

Do not just focus on what the words mean - these are words you want to use for yourself.

Learn what all the common forms of the word are: this means learning the word families

You need to know what other words you can use in combination with these words - this means collocations and prepositions. If you don't know that then you can't use them!

570 word families is not 570 words - it takes time - don't rush it

There are 1000s of words in the Academic Word List and it will take time to master. Why? Each word is in fact a family of words e.g. analyse is not one word but at least 4:

Analyse - analysis - analytical - analytically

Review is important

Learning words needs repetition. This is why I now have weekly review exercises. The latest is below:

IELTS essay exercises using the Academic Word List

One great way to learn words from the Academic Word List is to see how they are sued in context. These essay exercises will help with just that:

Word formation exercises

Exercises on the headwords in each sublist

Please note that this is a work in progress. That means I'm still working on it. Scheduled end date is December 2015. Also note that some of the links here will only take to you exercises and not complete lessons.